


Historical Curiosity

by russian_blue



Category: A Tale of Time City - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Elio first came to Time City, they put him in a museum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Historical Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



When Elio first came to Time City, they put him in a museum.

"After all," said Juana Enkian, who was the Head Curator of Erstwhile Museum, "he _is_ a rarity. He should be in his proper context." By this she meant the exhibition of rarities she had recently put together, of which she was very proud.

So they built a case for him to sit in, with a low front to keep people from stepping up and poking the exhibit, but no glass between him and the visitors. This was Enkian's idea: rather than having a placard explaining the android's nature and significance, he could tell people about himself.

"Hello. I am an android from Hundred-and-Five Century, one of about a hundred created to assist in the colonization of other planets during the Depopulation of Earth. I am stronger and faster than a born-human. I live longer, and I need less sleep. My bones do not break so easily. And of course, my brain is the best part of me. I have twice the intelligence of a born-human and five times the memory. Thus, I am acutely observant." He could recite this in forty-three languages, ranging from Hittite to Lolspeak to Sri Lankan Ninth Revised Sign.

At first the visitors thought of him as an automaton, reciting his lines, but capable of little more -- despite the fact that he had just described his extensive capabilities to them. Or, he thought, perhaps he made them nervous. They would listen with wary expressions, then nod awkwardly and shuffle away.

That changed when a girl whose age he estimated to be seven looked up at him and asked, "What's your name?"

He paused. This wasn't in the script, and however intelligent and observant he was, the routine had lulled his mind into a daze.

He said, "I don't have one."

"Why not?"

"My fellow androids were given the names of the ships on which they were intended to serve. But I was not intended for a ship, and so I did not receive a name." Was Erstwhile his ship? Or Time City? He could not imagine being called Erstwhile or Time City.

The little girl said, "I'll call you Elio. That's my brother's name. He's the best brother in the history of ever."

_Elio._ "Thank you," Elio said, and smiled.

  


* * *

  


He needed less sleep than a born-human, and that meant he got bored.

At night, when the visitors had left and the museum was quiet and dark, he would wander. They had set up a cot for him, when they realized they couldn't just leave him in the display case all the time, but he only used the cot for a few hours each night. Instead he went to all the other display cases of rarities, reading their placards. _Three-lobed shine ray from Eighty-One Century._ _Shakespearean First Folio from Seventeen Century._ _Clay Flute from Minus Ninety-Eight Century._ He looked at the objects in their cases -- they were behind glass, as he was not -- and thought about the scope of human history on Earth, the way that Time City stood outside it.

People were in the habit of asking him questions now, since they heard other visitors doing it. Many of the questions were repetitive. "How were you made?" "Do you wish you'd gone to the stars?" "Do you ever have to use the toilet?" The answer to the first was lengthy; to the second and third, it was "no" and "yes, but not often," respectively. He did not wish he had gone to the stars. He did wish, though, that he could see more of Time City.

One day, a man asked, "How does that work?" He wasn't talking about Elio. The man was standing in front of the display case holding the three-lobed shine ray.

The placard did not go into detail, but Elio had heard one of the museum docents answer that question some months before. He leaned forward in his case and said, "It uses ankaric waves to activate the dopamine and serotonin centers of the brain to create a state of blissful happiness, referred to as 'shine'. Single-lobed shine rays were in frequent use throughout the preceding century. A three-lobed shine ray, however, provides too much stimulation, and leaves its targets in a catatonic state -- albeit a very happy one."

The man looked as if he did not know what to make of any of that: the mechanism of operation, the notion that one could be catatonically happy, or the fact that one of the other displays had answered his question. He mumbled an embarrassed "thank you" and moved on.

When the docents heard of this, they came and talked to Elio after the museum closed. They found he could recite every placard in the exhibition, verbatim, along with many of their practiced speeches. After that, one of them arranged to give him access to the archives of Perpetuum, and another braved Enkian's office to persuade her that Elio should be a docent, instead of sitting in a case.

"He's a living piece of history!" she gushed to anyone who asked her about it later, as if the notion of letting Elio be a museum guide had been her own idea in the first place.

Elio was relieved. He had gotten very tired of reading the placards, and no amount of studying the exhibits had taught him how the curators decided the best way to display things. Now, at least, he could put his prodigious memory to new use.

  


* * *

  


In time Enkian retired from her job, and was replaced by a new Head Curator. Akilah bint Padman was the daughter of the man who had persuaded Enkian to make Elio a docent, and she had very different views as to what to do with Elio.

Which was to say, she didn't know what to do with him at all. "It's a waste of your capabilities," she said to him as they walked through the exhibition of rarities. "With your speed and strength, you should be working with Time Patrol, or something else like that. But we can't afford to risk you."

"I wouldn't mind," Elio said, although he wasn't sure if it was true. Time Patrol's work had its violent moments, and he had never hurt anyone. He didn't know how he would feel about doing so.

Akilah shook her head. "What if you were hurt -- or killed? That's true of every Time Patroller, of course; nobody is _replaceable_. But you aren't only a person. You're also an important piece of history, and that means we have certain obligations."

Elio did not feel like an important piece of history. He had hardly been in history at all: just the time the scientists spent assembling him -- which didn't really count, as he was not awake for most of it -- and then only a month or two of consciousness before Time City claimed him for their collection. He had read a great deal about it, during the hours when the museum was closed, but reading about history did not make him part of it.

He spent less time reading now. He had by no means gotten through everything in the Perpetuum collections (which would have taken several Platonic Years), but sometimes Akilah stayed late in the evenings, and she had introduced him to films. Whilom Tower must have wondered what had gotten into her, because she had them relay to her office a sampler of everything: from _The Jazz Singer_ to the slasher flicks of late Twenty Century to the historical dramas of Thirty-Two Century to the time-lapse flower growth epics of Forty-Four Century. She would have continued through the sensables developed from Forty-Nine Century onward, but Elio did not like them at all. He had been curious about the strong emotions that born-humans felt, but having them beamed directly into his head was deeply unpleasant -- not to mention the technology was a precursor to that which started the Mind Wars. He much preferred cartoons.

Akilah was incensed when she discovered that Elio hadn't been out of the museum, and even more incensed when she discovered there were rules about taking items from the collection elsewhere, especially rarities. "A pair of hair-styling gloves doesn't mind if it sits in one place forever," she said to Sempitern Ji-hoon Thorsteinsson, "but that's because it has no _brain._ " She declared Elio a traveling exhibition, and spent her days off taking him on tours of the city.

These tours began with the famous locations all the visitors went to, but soon diverged onto less usual things, like how Time City got its food and how much of their technology was sent out into history for repair. Elio was most fascinated by the ceremonies that marked the end of the year. He watched Sempitern Thorsteinsson pace through them, splendid in a dozen different kinds of regalia, and wondered at the significance behind each element. Time City had history of its own, he realized, even if no one paid attention to it. So perhaps he _was_ a part of history after all.

  


* * *

  


Not long after a new Sempitern was installed, the Chief of Time Patrol -- a man named Pierre Yuan -- came to ask Elio a favor.

"There are exams the citizens of Time City have to take," he began.

Elio nodded. "The Leavers' Tests. Do I have to take them?"

"No, of course not!" Yuan said. "You, er -- technically you aren't a citizen of Time City. I know Akilah has been trying to get that changed, but it's complicated. Anyway, that isn't what I came here for. No, there's a fellow who failed his tests, and has to go into history. But he's . . ."

He trailed off. Elio waited. When Yuan seemed to have difficulty finding a suitable word, he suggested, "A problem?"

"And then some," Yuan said, with feeling. "I'll be glad to be shot of him, frankly. But if we chuck him out into some early century, he'll probably try to send history wrong, just out of spite. He may not have passed the tests, but he knows enough to cause real trouble. So Chronologue have decided it would be best to put him at the very end of history -- the Depopulation of Earth. Would you mind coming along?"

Elio cocked his head to one side, considering. "In what capacity would I be accompanying you? I hope you do not mean that I should be this fellow's permanent companion."

Yuan's cry of alarm made Elio's ears ring. "Great Time -- I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy! You'll be coming right back here when we're done, and not just because Akilah would string me up by my ears if I left you there. The idea is that you can calm the fellow. You came from that century, after all."

"I know little more about it than what I have read," Elio said, "but I would be glad to help where I can. I presume you would like me to restrain him if he tries to do anything foolish."

Yuan looked as if he would have preferred Elio not to say it so directly, but he nodded.

So it was that Elio went back out into history, to the century from which he came. He found the place and time very odd, after so long in Time City. Everything was devoted to the great effort of colonizing the stars; he had never imagined a society so focused on a single purpose. Even the music was about the great leap they were preparing to take.

He was not there for long in any case. Yuan and the other Time Patrollers took their charge to speak with the captain of the _Aspirant_ , the ship on which they intended to place him. Elio, having little to contribute to that conversation, found himself talking to Aspirant: a fellow android, but one pursuing the purpose for which they had all been created.

Elio introduced himself politely, then found himself at a loss for what to say. Casting about for a suitable topic of conversation, he asked, "Are you very fond of film?"

"Film?" Aspirant said. "Last week there was a splendid advertisement for the worlds to be found among the stars. I liked that one particularly."

"Not advertisements," Elio said. "Entertainment. It is an ancient art form, invented in late Nineteen Century --"

Aspirant dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "That's the past! We're leaving all that behind. We will be shooting stars, granting the wishes of all humanity, making a fresh start for _Homo sapiens_ beyond the confines of Earth. Who cares about the dead weight of history, when there is all of the future to be explored?"

"Dead weight?" Elio sat up indignantly. "But the past is what brought you here. Why, you yourself would not exist were it not for the efforts of a group of scientists in Hundred-and-Two Century, who --"

Aspirant snorted. "They're dead. I'm interested in the living, and in the generations yet unborn. Upward and outward, and on to the infinite future!"

Elio found his right arm was twitching peculiarly. At first he wondered if it was some breakdown in the protoplasm from which he had been made. But the breakdown was very specific: his arm wanted to go upward and outward, and on to the very finite distance to Aspirant's nose.

In short, he _loathed_ his fellow android. Had their creators made them all to be so short-sighted? Perhaps that was why Time City had taken him: because he was defective, unsuited to the exploration of the stars. No, Elio decided -- there was no defect. It was only that residing in Time City had introduced him to the entire glorious span of history. Those living at its end were as blind to the whole as those living at its beginning.

When Yuan came to collect him, the Patrol Chief asked, "Any second thoughts about staying?"

"None at all," Elio said. "I should very much like to go home now."

  


* * *

  


He did have to restrain a person once, a man from Thirty-Seven Century who tried to steal one of the original time lock control eggs from Erstwhile Science. Elio did his best to exercise care, but the man struggled hard enough that his shoulder dislocated in Elio's grip. This had the salutary effect of making him go limp and stop fighting. Afterward Elio apologized to him for the injury, but he did so more out of a sense of social convention than any real guilt. The man had brought that pain upon himself, despite Elio's best efforts.

He mentioned this to Yuan, who by then had retired from Time Patrol. "Is it bad that I feel no particular sorrow for my actions?" he asked, when he was done.

Yuan thought it over. "Do you find yourself _wanting_ to hurt people?"

"Why should I?" Elio asked. "I suppose I might wish to hurt someone if I thought injury would stop them from doing other harm, and saw no better way. But I don't derive any particular enjoyment from seeing them suffer."

"Then I don't see a problem." Yuan considered Elio for a long moment. Then he asked, "What _do_ you feel?"

Elio shrugged. "Interest. Amusement. Boredom used to be a very large part of my life." He hesitated. "I feel . . . regret when people pass away." Akilah had died several years before. Her children had cried at her funeral. Elio had not, but once his life was empty of her presence, he found himself missing her.

He added, with awkward stiffness, "I will regret it when you are gone."

Yuan clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a good man, Elio. Whoever arranged for you to be brought here, I'm glad they did it."

  


* * *

  


After Yuan was gone, the Head Curator of Erstwhile Museum told him that he was being transferred to the Annuate Palace. "The new Sempiterna asked for you," the Head Curator said. "Though if you don't want to go, I'll find some way to put her off."

"I don't mind," Elio said. The new Sempiterna was a friend of Akilah's son. But the change puzzled him. When he arrived at the Annuate Palace, he asked her, "What am I doing here?"

"Anything you want to," she told him. "You've been stuck in Erstwhile for -- what, sixty years? I can't promise this old heap will be much better. You were made to colonize the stars, and we don't have anything half so exciting here. But at least it will be a change of pace."

Elio thought it over, then said, "I would like to learn about the ceremonies."

The Sempiterna rolled her eyes. "Better you than me. I can't keep track of the all the Amporic Whatsis and Esemplastic Thingummies. But those don't fill every day, except at the New Year. Isn't there anything -- well, more _interesting_ you'd like to do?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated. With mild interest, he identified what he was feeling as trepidation. The Sempiterna made an encouraging gesture, and so he said, "I would like to have my own museum."

  


* * *

  


It was only a small gallery, off to one side in the Annuate Palace, but it was more than enough -- almost too much. Presented with glass cases of his very own, Elio found he had very little idea of what to fill them with, much less how to present the result. He shuffled objects in and out and around. He asked advice from everyone who passed through. He read book after book on the topic, and found himself no wiser than when he had begun.

The Sempiterna went away, replaced by another, and then another. Elio stayed in the Annuate Palace. He was the only one who could remember what was needed for every ceremony, and besides, his museum was there. Occasionally Elio went out into history, but more often his friends in the Time Patrol brought him things: moon dust collected from Titan in Hundred and One Century, an erhu from Thirty-Nine Century, first-edition Star Wars figurines from Twenty Century. His room grew ever more cluttered with odds and ends, too many to fit into the glass cases.

The years ticked by. Ranjit Walker was elected Sempitern, and moved into the Annuate Palace with his family. He was a good Sempitern overall, but some aspects of the job did not suit him well. The ceremonies, which had been sedate, well-organized things ever since Elio began helping, became magnificent displays of bedlam beforehand. Elio found he quite enjoyed hiding items of regalia, and trotting along at Ranjit's heels, moving nothing like at full speed, pretending that they were going to be late.

One evening, after the last of the New Year ceremonies were done, Elio sat with Ranjit in his study. Elio was drinking a very fine Icelandic grape juice; Ranjit was having "something stronger," by which he meant Namibian peppered palm brandy.

"How long have you been in Time City, Elio?" Ranjit asked.

It required no calculation; the number was there, waiting. "Ninety-six years ago today."

Ranjit let out an anguished groan. "Great Time. Even worse than I thought, then."

"Worse?" Elio asked. Apprehension was not something he often felt, but it gripped him now.

The Sempitern got up with a tired grunt and went to his desk. "Chronologue. A slower bunch of sticks in the mud I never saw. Just because we aren't out in history, they think they have all the time in the world . . . I don't even know how long ago this was submitted. I found it a few months ago, buried in the records, and bludgeoned them until they passed it." He opened a drawer and removed something rectangular and flat. It was a framed piece of paper, the text beautifully engraved in universal symbols, with colored accents forming an interlaced border.

Elio studied it curiously when Ranjit handed it to him. The meaning of the words took shape in his mind with the beautiful elegance of poetry, the symbols influencing one another to change their significance, until at last he understood what the paper said.

_The Chronologue of Time City, with the endorsement of Sempitern Ranjit Walker, and in accordance with the laws as laid down by their predecessors and our founder Faber John, do hereby bestow upon the android Elio the full rights of a citizen of Time City._

He understood what the paper said . . . and yet, some part of it still did not make sense. Elio looked up at Ranjit, blinking.

The Sempitern looked as if he had a stomach pain, which meant he was enormously pleased. "One of the Head Curators put the motion forward, I think, however long ago it was. An end to this nonsense about you being a museum exhibit, traveling or otherwise."

"But --" Elio asked. He reviewed what he knew of Time City's laws. "I have not taken the Leavers' Tests." He had never heard of them being used for immigrants to Time City, but the last immigrant had been hundreds of years before his arrival. In the absence of any clearer guideline, he could only think of what Yuan had once said, about the tests being a requirement for all citizens.

Ranjit let out a bark of laughter. "Take the tests? You can if you want to, but there isn't much point. You know more about Time City than anybody here except Dr. Wilander."

This was not, Elio reflected, much of a compliment to his knowledge. But he still understood Ranjit's point. "I should like to take them. It seems . . . proper."

"Fine," Ranjit said. "You and your double intelligence and five times the memory can take the tests. Tomorrow morning, if you like. Make us born-humans look like fools. But you're a citizen, Elio -- unless you decide to throw the results and get yourself exiled. If you want to go out into history, though, all you have to do is ask."

Elio shook his head without hesitating. "No?" Ranjit said. "Very well. Stay here, then. Doesn't even have to be in the Annuate. You could join the Time Patrol. Take over Perpetuum. Sell butter-pies in the streets."

Elio was not very fond of butter-pies. "If it is all right with you, sir," he said, "I should like to stay in the Annuate. I enjoy helping."

He reflected again. Something was growing inside him, warm and strong, and it found its expression in a happy smile. "Besides -- my museum is here."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Originally this was going to be a much more worldbuildy fic, probably focusing on Sempitern Walker's job. Then I noticed that you had asked for Elio fic several times before, and once the first line wandered into my head, the story swerved around to focus on him instead. I tried to cram in little details around the edges, though.


End file.
